Tom Walsh writes in the Free Press today that, in advance of President Barack Obama’s jobs speech, he wishes the President would take economic counsel from Ford CEO Alan Mulally. Then he reveals that Obama actually did just that.

Sept. 8, Detroit Free Press: If the U.S. economy could replicate Ford, we would witness not only an uptick in growth and jobs, but also a steady reduction in debt.

In fact, Obama phoned both Mulally and investment tycoon Warren Buffett late last month to talk about how to spur growth, the White House said. The president also spent time at the home of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, one of 27 big wheels who serve on the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness chaired by General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt.

Now, Walsh is correct to say Ford’s turnaround under Mulally is nothing short of a miracle. If the President is looking for a general adviser from the business community, he couldn’t do better than Alan Mulally.

At the same time, our national economic troubles aren’t totally analogous to the Big Three’s near-death experience. Actually, the Big Three’s turnaround didn’t “create jobs.” It required Ford, GM and Chrysler to shed tens of thousands of jobs.

And to go a step further, unlike the Big Three dinosaurs, I’m not convinced the national economy is something that needs to be “fixed.” Obviously, the unemployment rate is high. That’s a big problem, but does that mean the economy is broken? Crop harvests are basically good. Corporations are profitable. Inflation is low. Someone is out there to sell you virtually anything you want in almost any quantity you want at the push of button.

If we define the economy as a process that delivers goods and services to customers through the marketplace, then we have to say the economy is working quite nicely. As Douglas Rushkoff opines on CNN.com, this economy provides nearly everything anyone could want except full employment.

Sept. 7, CNN: According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, there is enough food produced to provide everyone in the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day. And that's even after America disposes of thousands of tons of crop and dairy just to keep market prices high. Meanwhile, American banks overloaded with foreclosed properties are demolishing vacant dwellings to get the empty houses off their books.

Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.

Rushkoff is right about “jobs” where almost anyone else is wrong. We don’t have a jobs problem, we have a problem with adapting to technology.

Sept. 7, CNN: Now that we're in the digital age, we're using technology the same way: to increase efficiency, lay off more people, and increase corporate profits.

While this is certainly bad for workers and unions, I have to wonder just how truly bad is it for people. Isn't this what all this technology was for in the first place? The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with "career" be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?

Hmmm, nope. That sounds hard. Let’s just talk about the same, tired job creation strategies from a bygone era and about how job creators are amazing in every way. That strategy has worked so well so far.